Posts Tagged ‘Christmas’
I was in Lethbridge this weekend after the big blizzard that just roared through southeast Alberta.
On Sunday after shoveling the walk and the two foot drift of snow by the garage, Taylor and I took to doing some errands around town. We figured by this time the plows must have been out during Saturday evening and Sunday morning so there would not be an issue.
We noticed that the main roads were plowed but despite being out for about an hour and a half, we never saw a plow working, but unexpectedly we saw bucket trucks out en masse hanging Christmas decorations on the lamp posts along the busier streets, going so far as to push two lane traffic into one lane.
It just seemed kind of silly to me that if you go to a residential street there are big snow drifts and people are getting stuck, we even saw one person driving a quad down the street with a plow on the front, and meanwhile there are Christmas decorations being hung… I hope city workers in Medicine Hat were more concerned with snow removal than wishing everyone who got stuck a Merry Christmas.
I just realized when we received a comment on our last years Midnight Madness article that this year’s event is quickly approaching. This year, Midnight Madness will be taking place on Thursday night (November 26th). Most of the deals and sales that most business owners promote will start at 6PM and last all the way till midnight. Some of the yearly events include Santa arriving at City Hall, a tree lighting ceremony, Christmas carols, ice sculptures, and the international festival of trees.
The Downtown Medicine Hat website has recently changed their page to promote the event as seen here which details, new comer to this year, The Monarch Theatre having free admission for Midnight Madness. Midnight Madness is primarily a downtown event, but I’m sure some other shops around town also take part. Or, in the case of the Medicine Hat Mall – they have their own event which is called Moonlight Madness which we also posted about last year – still waiting for some information on this one for this year.
Alternatively, for more information, there is a couple businesses listing their own events/information on the Shop the Hat website event list.
New look for the Santa Claus Fund website
Lately, I’ve been trying to get around to featuring all the new local websites that have been popping up lately, but it’s really hard writing about all of them on a weekly basis now. It almost seems like around 2 or 3 of them pop up per week – I guess I am not helping the situation either, as it’s part of my profession, haha.
This week we have a new website for the Medicine Hat News Santa Claus Fund (Society). The logo was designed by local design studio, December 2nd, while the website was created and designed by TriCube Media for a Medicine Hat News organization. It’s great when three local companies can come together and develop something; albeit, TriCube Media and Medicine Hat News were already working together. The website URL has also changed over to “mhsantafund” rather than the obscure “mhscf”.
A great section of the site is the event section which is a huge list of events taking place as part of the Santa Claus Fund. The 17 or so events are all happening from July to December and most of them are recurring yearly. Hopefully we can even post a couple of them on Medicine Hat Media when they are near. There was a full story about the make-over posted in the Medicine Hat News today.
All information about the organization can be found on the new website.
Supposedly sales were down everywhere this holiday season; however, I did not see any evidence of this myself in Medicine hat. I made the stupid mistake of going to get a few items from Superstore on the day before Christmas Eve… how stupid of me. There was literally no parking spots, I should of taken that as a warning. You know how you often wonder why there is such large parking lots outside of stores when they are normally only half full at maximum anyways? Apparently they are just for the few days before and after Christmas. I entered the mosh-pit-like environment as soon as I stepped through the doors. This place was packed and the line ups were half way down the aisles themselves. This wasn’t an isolated incident either, supposedly the malls were packed and Walmart… well I won’t even begin to imagine what that place would be like. Supposedly this situation doubled itself on Boxing Day where shoppers were reported to have spent 10 hours waiting overnight in line outside Visions to get a new TV in one case.
Imagery via blogtalkradio.com
I did notice the sales though, Boxing Day is no longer a day, and now not even a week, in some cases in a few weeks or full month of sales. And normally the deals aren’t that great either, but this year 75%-90% off signs were littered everywhere. And these sales even started before Boxing Day, they started weeks before Christmas in some cases. For example, the Medicine Hat Mall had two Moonlight Madness events this year. Obviously this is a marketing tactic to get people to buy at Christmas in the wake of the Canadian recession. I think it probably worked on some level locally in Medicine Hat, but I think overall, we are a little too dramatic about the recession thing in Medicine Hat and other smaller towns. I cant wager a guess at what will happen next year though, depending how much deeper we have dug ourselves. Business’s have been reporting that they did just as well last year in terms sales (on Boxing Day), and maybe even better.
Ken Gousseau, Medicine Hat News Reporter, has reported about this here.
You heard right, tomorrow night (December 23, 2008) lasting from 9:00pm to 2:00am there will be a Christmas dance party of the indie-pop persuasion at The Silver Buckle. There will be a $5 cover charge and it will be DJ Bones’ first time DJing in Medicine Hat. The cool part is he will be taking requests all night as well he will be taking pre-requests via the Facebook Event board.
Christmas Indie Pop Dance Part at The Silver Buckle featuring Bones
The Silver Buckle
687 South Railway Street SE
Medicine Hat, AB
Featuring some tunes by the following bands/groups:
“The Strokes, Bloc Party, The Pixies, Franz Ferdinand, Of Montreal, The Stone Roses, Spoon, Rich Aucoin, The Unicorns, The Virgins, Boats, The Cure, The Pipettes, Metric, Two Hours Traffic, Komeda, Vampire Weekend, Mark Ronson, Spiral Beach, LCD Soundsystem, Modest Mouse, Wolf Parade, The Hidden Cameras, Belle and Sebastian, The Rapture, The Postal Service, The Shins, MGMT, Cut Copy, Black Kids, Sleepless Nights, Chromeo, Justice and way more…”
So basically half my iTunes collection. Too bad some of us have to work still! Also not to mention I hate the scene, haha. All photos/posters have been supplied by the Facebook Event.
DJ Bones -Photo by Mary-Jane Doucette
*UPDATE* View the 2009 Midnight Madness article
*Updated November 26th, 2008*
As part of officially kicking off the Christmas season, starting at 6:00PM on Thursday, November 27th, the Medicine Hat downtown area will be hosting “Midnight Madness”. Many businesses downtown will have their doors opened until midnight – many featuring huge deals and savings. Labels For Men & Women, for example, will opening their second floor for this night only – trying to sell huge amounts of their inventory at reduced prices. For a complete listing of businesses and places having sales, take a look at this huge list on the Downtown Medicine Hat site.
Other events include Santa arriving at the city hall at 6PM, tree lighting ceremony, Christmas carols, ice sculptures, free parking and the international festival of trees. I’m not sure what that last one is about, but I guess you have to go down and check it out to find out. For more information and complete listing of events, check out the Downtown Medicine Hat site events page.
This is madness! Madness? This is MEDICINE HAAAAAT! (300 reference for good measure)
Tomorrow is the last day you will get to check out The Medicine Hat Exhibition & Stampede’s 11th Annual Christmas Market located in the Cypress Centre Pavilion and Auditorium. The market itself features things such as baking, jewelery, artwork, crafts, candies, clothing and much more. It’s focus is homemade and handcrafted items. You can kind of thing of it as a “Farmer’s Market” which is also hosted in the same place actually, except this is more geared towards the theme of Christmas and the holidays in general.
Christmas Market
The 11th Annual Christmas Market runs Friday, November 14th from 12:00PM to 8:00PM and then Saturday, November 15th from 9:00AM to 6PM. Admission is $2, unless you are 12 and under, in which case it’s free. For more information call the Stampede Office at 403-527-1234 (that’s a pretty sweet number if I do say myself).
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